Week Commencing 19th October 2026.

The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove

Active Learning

We have had another wonderful, busy week filled with seasonal fun, teamwork, and lots of muddy outdoors.

Our Key Story ‘Pumpkin Soup!’ by Helen Cooper

We have been getting thoroughly into the spooky spirit in the Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove this week! Our story of the week was Pumpkin Soup, which we absolutely loved reading and retelling together. It is such a beautiful story, and it sparked some really lovely conversations about teamwork, sharing, and how we can work together to resolve conflicts.

Inspired by the book, we decided to make our very own nursery pumpkin soup in our key groups! The children did a fantastic job using child-safe knives to chop up the vegetables, looking after each other as they worked. Everyone helped, just like the animals in the story!

We have also been exploring real pumpkins inside and out. We compared different shapes and sizes, peeked inside to see the seeds, and decorated them with lots of different materials – including gloop! The children loved the sensory experience of squeezing and pouring the gloop, chatting about how it changes as they move it.

Rhyme of the Week: – Incy Wincy Spider

We’ve had so much fun with spiders this week! Some of us carefully used our fingers to clip the correct number of peg legs onto our spiders, while others used pipe cleaners. We then invented some brilliant games to see whose spider could race across the floor the fastest – some children tried blowing them, while others fanned them with paper to get them moving! We also loved using winding spiders to sing our rhyme, which was fantastic practice for our physical skills as we wound them up and down.

Autumn Fun and Physical Skills

Outdoors, we are continuing to make the most of the gorgeous autumn weather. The children are getting so strong, using their muscles to climb the frames and pull themselves up the embankment using the rope for support (before having the absolute best time sliding back down!).

Thank you so much for sending in the Autumn Treasure bags! We have had some wonderful discussions looking closely at what you collected together at home, comparing leaves, sticks, conkers, and acorns. We used our treasures to get creative, making transient art, gluing and sticking, and even threading and weaving leaves. Some of us also used our conkers to make brilliant snakes! We used tools to carefully make holes and thread them onto string, which gave us a great chance to talk about length, size, and counting how many conkers we had used.

Back outside, the pumpkins were put to good use for our fine motor skills! The children used wooden hammers to tap golf tees into the pumpkins to create patterns. Some children decided to push sticks and twigs into the holes. We also practiced using elastic bands to stretch over the pumpkins. This took a lot of time, concentration, and patience, and we were so proud of how resilient the children were!

Spooky songs

Some of our children have been getting creative making up a super spooky song. They had so much fun singing and performing it. We’re sure you’ll agree that’s its great!

It goes like this:

(To the tune of London Bridge is falling down)

All the ghosts are flying round,

Flying round, flying round

All the ghosts are flying round,

On Halloween.

All the wolves are walking around,

Walking around, walking around,

All the wolves are walking around,

On Halloween.

All the witches are flying around,

Flying around, flying around,

All the witches are flying around,

On Halloween.

All the skeletons are rattling around,

rattling around, rattling around,

All the skeletons are rattling around,

On Halloween.

Parents as Partners

A quick reminder that we have our Parent Consultations coming up on Monday 2nd November and Tuesday 3rd November.

This is a lovely, informal opportunity to have a 10-minute chat with your child’s key person. We’ll talk about how they are settling back into nursery life, share their favourite interests, look at their learning both at nursery and home, and chat about their individual next steps.

Finally, we want to say a massive thank you for all of your incredible support this half term. We hope you all have a happy half term holiday!